The manager was the reason we did not get back to the playoffs in 2006.

Two critical managerial mistakes:

Using Brandon McCarthy in the pen instead of as a sixth starter to give Buehrle and Contreras more rest;

Playing Mackowiak regularly in CF.

I'm not sure these two mistakes were enough to lose the division, but they did cost the Sox a few games.

__________________The universe is the practical joke of the General at the expense of the Particular, quoth Frater Perdurabo, and laughed. The disciples nearest him wept, seeing the Universal Sorrow. Others laughed, seeing the Universal Joke. Others wept. Others laughed. Others wept because they couldn't see the Joke, and others laughed lest they should be thought not to see the Joke. But though FRATER laughed openly, he wept secretly; and really he neither laughed nor wept. Nor did he mean what he said.